Former Central Intelligence Agency officer, whistleblower and GW alum John Kiriakou discussed the state of democracy and his career path from GW to the CIA at Lisner Auditorium Wednesday.
Kiriakou, who completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University in 1986 and 1988, respectively, said civil liberties in the United States have deteriorated gradually because of a failure on the part of Congress to reign in the overreach of the executive branch that he said expanded in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Jayson Bustos, the president of GW’s chapter of Democracy Matters — a non-profit civic advocacy organization — moderated the discussion with the ex-CIA officer.
Kiriakou said much of what he views as a decline in Americans’ civil liberties stems from former U.S. President George W. Bush and the actions his administration took in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, like the adoption of the USA Patriot Act — which drastically increased the government’s ability to conduct surveillance as a part of counter-terrorism efforts.
Kiriakou said Americans have gradually allowed the U.S. government to ignore civil liberties “one little bit at a time,” pointing to secret extrajudicial prisons — known as CIA black sites where the agency has extrajudicially detained, interrogated and often tortured suspected terrorists. Reporting from The Washington Post in 2005, revealed the CIA had set up secret sites in foreign countries like Afghanistan, Romania...
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